Disk drives are commonly used to store data in computers, data bases, digital video recorders, and other devices. A disk drive comprises a rotating magnetic disk and a head actuated over the disk to magnetically write data to and read data from the disk. The disk drive may write data to and read data from the disk in response to write/read commands from a host that uses the disk drive for data storage. Typically, the host addresses data stored in the disk drive using logical addresses. The disk drive maintains a translation table mapping the logical addresses from the host to physical addresses of the corresponding data on the disk. When the host later requests data from the disk drive at certain logical addresses, the disk drive uses the translation table to locate the requested data on the disk.
The disk drive may update the translation table in a buffer as the disk drive writes data to the disk. The disk drive may later write the updated translation table in the buffer to the disk for later use. However, due to an unexpected power loss, the disk drive may be unable to write the updates in the translation table to the disk, in which case the updates may be lost.